Shakespeare in the Park has been an Aspen staple for a decade. “As You Like It” is one of Shakespeare’s more fantastical plays, and is this year’s work of choice from the Bard. But rather than using more fantastical tropes like in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “As You Like It” is described as a pastoral comedy.
Kent Reed, the director of the Hudson Reed Ensemble, who puts on the event every year, said that the landscape is a natural choice.
“Even the Globe Theatre didn’t have a roof,” said Reed. “It was kind of semi-inside/outside.”
When your source material coined the term “all the world’s a stage,” you kind of have to take it literally.
“The scope and breadth of his plays lend itself to a beautiful landscape, which I think we’ve created in Galena Plaza,” he said.
So he had to make some changes. First, whittle down the script. It’s more than two hours off the bat. Then add his own personal flare by adding music and putting different spins on some of the characters, like making them dress like goths.
“We want to make the show more palatable to everybody,” said Reed.
And although “As You Like It” is also the first use of the phrase “too much of a good thing,” that doesn’t seem to be the case for Shakespeare in the Park.
